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News >> Technology >>
"Boost" new ad product lauched by Google
By siliconindia
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Wednesday, 27 October 2010, 18:22 IST
Bangalore: "Boost" is the new ad-product launched by Google for local business owners. The new advertising service will provide information of the business based on the keywords and the location of the local businesses. Boost is already providing services in San Francisco, Houston and Chicago and will roll out to more cities as well.
All small business owners need to do in order to sign up is provide a brief company description, a web address, select categories and set a monthly budget. In case that still seems like too much work, those businesses with a Google Places account can opt to have the "description" and "categories" fields filled in automatically.
When users search for the local businesses in Google the ads will appear under the "sponsored links" section of Google web search and Google Maps as well. The ads contain basic information like address, business name and phone number. It will also have a star rating and the number of reviews received. The advantage of this service is that the business owners can create their Boost ads from their Google Places account itself. This makes Boost a completely automated system and the profit for these ads is made by the concept "cost per click ads"
"We hope Boost provides busy local business owners with a quick and easy way to share information about themselves with the people who look for them online," said Kiley McEvoy, product manager for Google. While making no specific mention of costs, McEvoy hinted in his post they could be lower than standard Adwords fees. "Youll only pay when a potential customer actually clicks on your ad," he said.
This product may prove to be a competitor for the already existing service of Facebook Places advertsing. Although Facebook only provides cursory guidelines for Places use by businesses but no ads are listed under location based advertising. These two companies are in a tight battle for ad dollars, and Facebook has been able to gain a competitive advantage by delivering hyper-targeted, highly relevant ads based on user-supplied information.
With the launch of Boost, Google joins Twitter in preparing an ad product aimed specifically at small businesses. The Mountain View, California-based company has increasingly focused on location-specific offerings recently, having launched a small business blog in August and appointed former search guru Marissa Mayer as head of the location and local services two weeks ago.